The error briefly threatened Vanderbilt’s Medicare reimbursement status, but federal officials said the status was no longer in jeopardy after the hospital submitted a corrective plan last week.

Both Vanderbilt and the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services have declined to release the plan. April Washington, a CMS spokeswoman, said the plan won’t be released until the agency has time to conduct an unannounced “follow-up survey to determine compliance."

John Howser, a Vanderbilt spokesman, confirmed that inspectors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services had returned to the hospital Tuesday.

The medication error occurred last December after a Vanderbilt nurse grabbed the wrong medicine while attempting to give a patient a routine sedative. Instead, the nurse gave the patient vecuronium, a powerful anesthetic used to keep patients still during surgery.

How the fatal mistake happened

According to a federal investigation report that was released last week, the medication error occurred Dec. 26 while the patient was being treated at Vanderbilt for a subdural hematoma — or bleeding in the brain — that was causing a headache and loss of vision. Despite these symptoms, the patient was alert, awake and in improving condition before the error.

The patient was then taken to Vanderbilt’s radiology department to receive a full body scan, which involves laying inside a large tube-like machine. Because the patient was claustrophobic, a doctor prescribed a dose of Versed, which is a standard anti-anxiety medication.

The nurse then went to fill this prescription from one of the hospital’s electronic prescribing cabinets, which allow staff to search for medicines by name through a computer system. The nurse could not find the Versed, so the nurse triggered an “override” feature that unlocks more powerful medications, according to the investigation report.

The nurse then typed the first two letters in the drug’s name — “VE” — into the cabinet computer and selected the first medicine suggested by the machine, not realizing it was vecuronium, not Versed.

The patient was then given the medication and lost consciousness while inside the scanning machine. Doctors determined the following day that the patient had suffered partial brain death. The patient later died after being disconnected from a breathing machine.